Two-mode 112th Congress Senate Voting (Knoke et al. 2021)

Superseded. These three datasets are superseded by mpn_senate, which holds the same data as one multilevel network with a community node attribute. They are kept for one release and will be removed in 1.8.0.

These datasets list the U.S. Senators who served in the 112th Congress, which met from January 3, 2011 to January 3, 2013. Although the Senate has 100 seats, 103 persons served during this period due to two resignations and a death. However, the third replacement occurred only two days before the end and cast no votes on the bills investigated here. Hence, the number of Senators analyzed is 102.

CQ Almanac identified 25 key bills on which the Senate voted during the 112th Congress, and which Democratic and Republican Senators voting “yea” and “nay” on each proposal.

Lastly, we obtained data on campaign contributions made by 92 PACs from the Open Secrets Website. We recorded all contributions made during the 2008, 2010, and 2012 election campaigns to the 102 persons who were Senators in the 112th Congress. The vast majority of PAC contributions to a candidate during a campaign was for $10,000 (the legal maximum is $5,000 each for a primary and the general election). We aggregated the contributions across all three electoral cycles, then dichotomized the sums into no contribution (0) and any contribution (1).

data(mpn_senate_dem)

data(mpn_senate_rep)

data(mpn_senate_over)

Format

#> -- # Senate community A --------------------------------------------------------
#> # A labelled, undirected network of 114 senators and 2791 contribution and vote
#> ties
#>
#> -- Nodes
#> # A tibble: 114 x 2
#>   label      mode
#>   <chr>      <chr>
#> 1 Baucus     senators
#> 2 Begich     senators
#> 3 Bennet     senators
#> 4 Blumenthal senators
#> 5 Boxer      senators
#> 6 BrownSh    senators
#> # i 108 more rows
#>
#> -- Ties
#> # A tibble: 2,791 x 2
#>    from    to
#>   <int> <int>
#> 1     1    52
#> 2     1    53
#> 3     1    54
#> 4     1    55
#> 5     1    56
#> 6     1    57
#> # i 2,785 more rows
#>

#> -- # Senate community B --------------------------------------------------------
#> # A labelled, undirected network of 134 senators and 3675 contribution and vote
#> ties
#>
#> -- Nodes
#> # A tibble: 134 x 2
#>   label     mode
#>   <chr>     <chr>
#> 1 Alexander senators
#> 2 Ayotte    senators
#> 3 Barrasso  senators
#> 4 Baucus    senators
#> 5 Blunt     senators
#> 6 Boozman   senators
#> # i 128 more rows
#>
#> -- Ties
#> # A tibble: 3,675 x 2
#>    from    to
#>   <int> <int>
#> 1     1    64
#> 2     1    66
#> 3     1    67
#> 4     1    70
#> 5     1    71
#> 6     1    72
#> # i 3,669 more rows
#>

#> -- # Senate community overlap --------------------------------------------------
#> # A labelled, undirected network of 52 senators and 614 contribution and vote
#> ties
#>
#> -- Nodes
#> # A tibble: 52 x 2
#>   label     mode
#>   <chr>     <chr>
#> 1 Baucus    senators
#> 2 Cardin    senators
#> 3 Carper    senators
#> 4 Casey     senators
#> 5 Collins   senators
#> 6 Feinstein senators
#> # i 46 more rows
#>
#> -- Ties
#> # A tibble: 614 x 2
#>    from    to
#>   <int> <int>
#> 1     1    21
#> 2     1    22
#> 3     1    23
#> 4     1    24
#> 5     1    25
#> 6     1    26
#> # i 608 more rows
#>

References

Knoke, David, Mario Diani, James Hollway, and Dimitris C Christopoulos. 2021. Multimodal Political Networks. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge University Press.